Be the change that you want to see in the universe. HN has a super easy to use API and I have downloaded the entire history of the site before for a past project. If you don't want to do the leg work yourself I am positive that the data set is out there for download somewhere if you google around.
Data analysis note: the public datasets only have submissions and comments, and just because a HN user has stopped submitting/commenting doesn't mean they quit HN. Lurking is fun.
My old handle unfortunately and innocently looks like (or can be interpreted as) "I'm just here to start shit!" It did not occur to me it might be misinterpreted a certain way until six weeks after I started it and I didn't think it important at that point. As I gained more karma, I did a blog post at some point explaining the completely innocent origin story for it (typo and all). After I hit the leaderboard, I decided, basically, "Oh, brother. This is so not worth the hassle involved. Yeesh." And changed to my actual first and middle names.
That would give no information about the reason someone left: there are a lot of reasons to stop interacting with hn that have nothing to do with the “best people leave in short order” theory.
I used to be incredibly active on here, and then I started getting downvoted on virtually every comment, likely for political reasons. I have all but stopped commenting compared to my previous activity. It just stopped being fun. Even posts I make that have nothing to do with politics, that only point out provable, factual information, get downvoted. I have over 13K karma, even after losing a few thousand points over the last 18 months or so. So the things that I have to say weren't always unpopular. I didn't change - the community did. It became a hostile, vindictive place.
I still visit daily because HN does a good job of surfacing interesting articles, but I used to find the comments more interesting than the stories themselves. That has changed in the last few years, as identity politics have taken hold. I can now accurately predict the content of many of the comments on a given story by simply reading its title. It's sad to see.
Browsing your recent comments, have you considered ... not commenting about downvotes?
I see a lot of "Why am I getting downvoted for this?", "Group think, downvotes, blah blah blah.", "I'm going to get downvoted for this but...", all of which are just magnets for more downvotes.
I think if you just stopped commenting on the downvoting, well, you'd still get the odd comment downvoted from time to time, because hey, you say things people don't like, you're going to get the downvotes, and yeah, people don't always explain why, which I know is annoying ... but you'd at least no longer be compounding it with the three or four follow-on comments that also all get downvoted, and your net karma would probably be fine.
You saw a recent thread about it in my history, but that is not something I normally comment on. I’ll bring it up every now and then when I say something entirely factual because I find it funny that people will downvote indisputable facts simply because they don’t happen to like what the fact says about their preferred narrative. But this was happening long before I ever started talking about them.
It’s appropriate to talk about here because the voting system is the topic of this article.
I was reading a somewhat controversial comment from you and then visited your account page probably to check for sibling comments in the same post. Your about me definitely changed how I feel about your comments and probably the source of your recent experience.
My about me is based upon my experience here over the last few years. I updated it at some point in the last 6 months, long after all this started. So it is a symptom of my experience here, not a cause.
It being based on your experience doesn't change the fact that it looks like it was written for the explicit purpose of getting under people's skin. Essentially, the responses you are getting (here) are the ones you are angling for.
I have briefly perused your comments and most of them seem to be interesting contributions. Some of them were definitely downvoted for no real reason AFAICT other than offering up unpopular opinions, and still others appeared to be downvoted for being what I think is a combative tone. You do, in general I think, come across as a bit combative. You have interesting, relevant, and/or factual things to say, maybe consider how what you are saying comes across.
I think you're using an overly broad brush. For example, you still feel it's worthwhile to comment sometimes which implies that there are bastions of useful content, which you don't list. I'm sure we disagree on things, which limits the extent of groupthink.
Beyond that, there's the relative difference between HN and places like 4chan. Nuance is helpful.
When I first put that up, I actually ended it by saying "Be part of the solution" or something along those lines. Then, as the downvotes kept coming, I came to realize that most of the people checking my profile had just downvoted one of my comments, and were there looking for additional comments to downvote. I have watched the downvotes come in batches, across threads. That's why it has a pretty negative tone.
I don't actually know. I am who I am, and have been responding to things in the same way since I arrived on the site. I took a lot of flack for criticizing GDPR, which I agree with in principle but believe was very poorly implemented. Also people seem to have confused me for a Trump supporter, even though I am middle-of-the-road politically - which is why I suspect that I get many automatic downvotes regardless of the content of my comments. I try to call things as I see them, and any criticism of left-leaning principles/programs/policies on here - even the most misguided ones - tends to meet with instant, harsh rebuke.
> I try to call things as I see them, and any criticism of left-leaning principles/programs/policies on here - even the most misguided ones - tends to meet with instant, harsh rebuke.
Something to consider; is it a harsh rebuke or just other people calling it as they see it?
If you will forgive the armchair psychoanalysis, perhaps "call things as I see them" is not a good approach? Does that not indicate a lack of engagement with the discourse? You seem to respond negatively, with accusations of bad faith, to a number of respondents who I thought had valid responses; this is builds antagonism.
I have stopped being offended by downvotes -- I am better at accepting them as opposing my viewpoint without having a better counter-argument. If a topic is controversial, I know it will attract downvotes, and I'm fine with insulting people who hold abhorrent views.
If you tone down the hyperbole a little, and write with less of a conspiracy minded tone, I suspect you will have far fewer downvotes; HN is rather libertarian leaning overall.
> I started getting downvoted on virtually every comment, likely for political reasons.
That could well be because a lot of the downvotes I saw in your recent comment history were on outright political topics (Parler/Trump‘s ban from Twitter/…) It might help if you just stayed away from those if you otherwise enjoyed being active here?
It's hilarious how your comment got immediately downvoted for sharing a personal anecdote about the very same thing. Must really be rubbing the people who downvote for political difference reasons the wrong way.
By leaving I would say over 180 days inactive. Dang can you post the result please:
SELECT hn_name, hn_karma, hn_last_active FROM comments WHERE TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, hn_last_active, NOW()) > 180 ORDER BY hn_karma DESC LIMIT 100